


pretty, moment, where are you going?

by haechansheaven



Series: to be a hero [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan-centric, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Linear Narrative, Non-graphic death, see notes for expanded tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:54:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25864693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haechansheaven/pseuds/haechansheaven
Summary: Jaehyun asks Donghyuck if he believes in fortune telling and Donghyuck says, quiet, “No. No, no. I don’t think I do.”(There’s a cross above Jaehyun’s head and, oh, maybe, in the end, Donghyuck sees some truth to it all.)a sequel topatiently, now, say, "i love you".
Relationships: Jung Yoonoh | Jaehyun/Lee Donghyuck | Haechan
Series: to be a hero [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876915
Comments: 19
Kudos: 58





	pretty, moment, where are you going?

**Author's Note:**

> m tagged me on [this tweet](https://twitter.com/proyearner/status/1286072902379606020) and then i thought, well, i had the idea already, i might as well write it!
> 
>  **notes/expanded tags** : minor character deaths (unnamed parents; taeil; mark; jaehyun; civilians); non-linear narrative with changing tenses; references to tea leaf reading; transition to superhero to supervillain; minor references/descriptions of grief/mourning

**_“... He’s always_ **

**_away from me now, some animal or constellation_ **

**_that walked out of the world but for rumors_ **

**_and half skeletons found in the Congo, drawings_ **

**_of what they might have looked like.”_ **

\-- Matthew Dickman, “Satallite”

Donghyuck is there when Jaehyun dies.

 _He wasn’t lonely_ , Johnny tells him, quiet.

Does it matter when Donghyuck is left alone?

“These days,” Donghyuck says to a camera, “the world’s a little too pretty. Everything works a little too well, don’t we all think so?”

Jaehyun had promised him that they were invincible, even if they were, inevitably, a tragedy.

“Let’s shake things up.”

-

-

-

**[ REPORTER 1: BREAKING NEWS. IN A SHOCKING TURN OF EVENTS -- ]**

**[ REPORTER 2: HOLD ON A SECOND. WE HAVE BREAKING NEWS FROM -- ]**

**[ REPORTER 3: IT’S LIKE A SCENE FROM A HORROR MOVIE -- ]**

Right.

And this is how Solaris went out just like the sun.

With an emphatic _BANG_ before watching the world descend into chaos.

-

-

-

Donghyuck is ten when he finds he can condense the light that filters through his fingers, drifting in through open windows. He sets fire to his living room and his parents die and, oh, isn’t this that sort of cliché superhero origin story? Isn’t this the moment he turns his back on society?

The Lee family finds him and tells him that this can be his new normal if he wants it to be and Donghyuck, under the shade of the tree, wonders what the word _normal_ even means. He takes their son’s hand, anyways, and follows them, because what does he have to lose.

 _Don’t follow strangers_ , his mother had told him.

Well, she’s dead, and Donghyuck doesn’t think a dead person can dictate what he does.

At the age of ten years, so very, very young, Donghyuck has lost one family and gained another. He isn’t sure what to make of these new people who prefer to sit in darkness, but they hold his hands that are covered in blisters and soon-to-be scars and promises him that everything will be okay, eventually.

(Donghyuck doesn’t believe them, but he lets them take his hand, anyways.)

Taeil is like the untouchable tide. You understand what moves it, and yet the very fabric of the world is some kind of intangible thing. He takes Donghyuck’s hands that first day, and then lets go and wanders on his own journey. When he comes back, he’s a different person with more scars and a new name that the people chant as he walks down city streets.

Donghyuck can’t pretend to know this new person, but he accepts him back, anyways, because Taeil was something of a normal part of his routine.

Oh. Right.

They meet on a deceptively cool summer night, where t-shirts don’t provide enough warmth against the wind, and you can taste the approaching stormfront on the tip of your tongue. Taeil’s fist is connecting with the jaw of a mugger, and Donghyuck is there, a bystander, watching with apathy as the man is beaten until he’s unrecognizable.

There’s a lot of anger in Taeil, and Donghyuck gets it, he really does, but he doesn’t think that violence has even solved anything.

There’s not much moonlight on city streets, Taeil will explain four years in the future, twenty-one and a little less angry, a little more settled. He’ll be engaged by then, and he’ll go by Lunario, not Taeil Moon, and Donghyuck will decide, that day, to go by Solaris.

 _Touch the sun and make it yours_ , his mother—the second mother, the new mother, the more careful mother who sits behind drawn shades and broken lightbulbs—had told him.

When Taeil comes back, Donghyuck decides that he’ll take this man and follow him. The world seems to beg for them to walk side by side. Instead, Donghyuck walks one step behind. This is a mistake. He doesn’t know this yet, though.

Mark Lee is full of life, and happiness, and Donghyuck wonders what that’s like when they first meet. He laughs in the face of danger, fists raised to the sky, a stupid phrase crowed as the people cheer. Mark Lee is in love with a person and a _thing_ —“I love the rush, the feeling of knowing I did something good, you know?”—and Donghyuck doesn’t really get what he means, but he ambles along in life and pretends that he does, anyways.

A sunny person is an omen, probably, and Donghyuck realizes the irony years later, the name Solaris tattooed on the inside of his bottom lip and over his heart. Perhaps he was the omen that they all were staring at. Perhaps he is why they went blind.

But, oh, we’re not there yet, that part of the story is for a little later, when things are going so, so well that it only seems inevitable that everything should come crumbling down.

Mark reminds Donghyuck of what it means to fight for something just for the sake of staying alive. It’s been some time since Donghyuck has kept his head above water, and Mark seems to do it without much of a thought—it’s instinctual. (It’s not. Staying alive is a struggle, and Donghyuck sees this in the way Mark clutches to Johnny’s hand on the sidelines and prays, silently, eyes shut tight.) Mark is an omen, in a good way.

In the bottom of Donghyuck’s cup, the tea leaves make a distorted flurry of arrows that point in every single direction. He’s never believed that sort of shit, anyways.

The cup falls to the ground, broken, the arrows still stuck to themselves.

This is an omen.

_Shut your ears_.

-

-

-

Lighthouses are something pretty and something haunted, and this is where Donghyuck meets Jaehyun as the tide swallows the path and they’re both stuck with the decision of swimming in their clothes or staying stranded for a day.

(Donghyuck can swim perfectly fine, and so can Jaehyun, and, oh, maybe they’re just looking for a reason to stay standing beside the pretty man they see out of the corner of their eye.)

Everything in Donghyuck’s life is a carefully laid cliché, and Jaehyun is no exception. He’s the kind of cliché that Donghyuck pulls into his life, anyways, and holds onto, because Jaehyun reminds him that it’s okay to swallow some water from the sea before you pull yourself back onto the boat and row back to shore.

The life hidden in the sea is so vastly unknown that Donghyuck think it’s fitting that they meet on a beach. There’s an endless race to understand everything hidden under the waves. Jaehyun is like that—a mystery that Donghyuck is trying to solve. It’s how they fall in love, though it’s more a curiosity turned into a comfort and, well, maybe that’s only Donghyuck who feels that way, because Jaehyun looks at him like he’s the source of everything alive in the world and Donghyuck doesn’t deserve that.

Falling love is a foreign concept, yet Donghyuck lets Jaehyun take his hand as they wade through waist-deep water back to shore where their friends wait. That day, he is not Solaris, but he is a man who can forget all the things that happened and focus only on the present.

Jaehyun places a crown on Donghyuck’s head, reminds him that it’ll fall if he drops his head, and, oh, maybe he can ignore the cross in the bottom of his cup that’s tattooed itself over Jaehyun’s head. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

-

-

-

_Donghyuck should not have ignored the cross, and that’s why he stands here, so fucking broken that the world looks at him and wonders, What the fuck are you so sad about?_

-

-

-

**XX News**

**TO: Solaris <solaris@OOcity.gov>**

**RE: Interview Footage from January 24**

Dear Solaris,

I am sorry to tell you that the footage from January 24, 20XX seems to be corrupted. I have checked all clouds and possible storage, and this seems to be consistent across all of them. This is an oversight from us here at XX News, and I have contacted others in an attempt to outsource for it.

If there is anything else that I can help you with, please let me know.

Once again, I apologize for this. If anything changes, I will be sure to let you know as soon as possible.

Best,

Jisung Park

…

[Expand message]

-

-

-

Donghyuck rolls the cup between his hands and flips the cup. The last drops of his fruit punch roll down the side and bead up. It isn’t a tight seal, and some seeps out, rolling to the edge of the table and staining his khakis.

Red dots with tight, defined lines will fade eventually. For now, they are stark and contrasted and, well, doesn’t this all make sense.

“Fuck. These were new.”

-

-

-

**[ REPORTER 1: AND TODAY, WE HAVE AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SOLARIS -- ]**

**[ REPORTER 2: WILL SOLARIS BE THE HERO THE CITY NEEDS? ]**

**[ REPORTER 3: WITH THE PASSING OF LUNARIO AND GOLDEN LION -- ]**

There are shoes to fill, and they’re so big, and the world feels uneven, everything moved enough that Donghyuck is tripping and stumbling and so, so lost. Mark and Taeil watch him from the sky and Donghyuck asks them why the fuck they had to go so soon and, well, isn’t this just the fate of a hero?

Let’s spend a few moments looking at the years and understanding that death is inevitable.

Donghyuck hits rewind and thinks.

-

-

-

Taeil loses his life protecting someone who should’ve died anyways.

Hear Donghyuck out.

Reporters have always strayed too close and they’ve always been a liability and Donghyuck has always held the belief that they should protect those that wish to stay alive. Taeil looks at him like he _doesn’t get it_ , and he thinks that, no, Taeil’s the one who doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand, doesn’t—

Taeil dies on a Tuesday. It’s one of those days of the week that’s a little better than Monday, but not by much, and there’s still plenty of reason to hate it. Donghyuck curls his hands into fists, but he doesn’t cry, because _when has he cried?_

 _Death is inevitable_ , he tells everyone. _Our fate is to die like a confetti canon. With a loud bang and a show._

The world calls him cynical and Donghyuck’s doesn’t give a fuck. Taeil is dead and heroes give their lives and it isn’t _cynical_. So long as there are risks, there are losses. To some, one life can feel as heavy as thousands. It’s not selfish, Donghyuck tells himself. It’s just being human.

In the darkness of their apartment, Jaehyun holds him as he shakes.

It’s a new moon.

He isn’t there when Taeil dies, but he wishes he was. Dying wishes come in the form of formal documents and visitations and what can Donghyuck say other than a robotic, “ _He was a good man. He served the people. We will miss him_ ,” when the concept of Taeil no longer existing a forty-minute drive out of the city cannot compute in his mind?

Taeil’s child is wide-eyed and at that age where the word death has a definition but no tangible meaning, and he asks in a soft voice when his father is coming home and why they’re laying a box into the ground and, well, how do you explain it to a child who still thinks there are good things in the world?

( _He didn’t kill his parents in a fire, Donghyuck. He isn’t you. He won’t be you. Don’t say anything shut up, shut up, shut up—_ )

The ceremony is bland in the sort of way that Taeil would have wanted, and Donghyuck kneels beside his grave for hours after everyone has left and Jaehyun stands in the shade of a tree littered in blossoms and, right, sometimes death can look peaceful and pretty even when everything is so, so sad.

There’s a lake and empty plots and Donghyuck remembers visiting here with Taeil and Mark, the two of them pointing out the plots of land they’ll one day be buried and asking Donghyuck if he had thought that far ahead and, no, of course he hadn’t, why _would he_?

(Because all good things come to an end, of course.)

Ending up here, surrounded by these people who want him to keep on living was never his intention. Donghyuck, in the center of the maze, stares at the sky and realizes that this is okay for now.

New moons become a recurring theme in Donghyuck’s life, like arrows and crosses and waves that threaten to drown him.

-

-

-

_Maybe that’s when I realized_.

-

-

-

Raise your hand if you’re comfortable with being fragile as the entire world looks your way.

Oh? Are there some takers?

Here’s how Donghyuck copes:

He gets up, makes enough coffee for him and Jaehyun, and gets dressed to keep the city safe.

Mark does the same, so it isn’t apathy, even when he feels like a complete piece of shit while he stares Taeil’s wife and kid in the face without a shadow of sadness on his face. Donghyuck has compassion, he has sympathy, but he’s not sure that this sort of life is made for people who can’t handle loss or grief or that profound sort of sadness that digs itself under your skin.

(Donghyuck is a fucking hypocrite, that’s what he is, body shaking every single night in bed, Jaehyun holding him carefully, delicately, with reverence that Donghyuck doesn’t think he deserves.

This is how Donghyuck mourns, face pressed into his pillow and body going into shock from loss while his mind is quiet.)

Mark offers him a hand and Donghyuck doesn’t take it, because he doesn’t need it, he’s fine, he can keep going, there’s nothing stopping him.

 _Save everyone_ , Taeil told him.

He doesn’t understand, but he does it, anyways.

Mark dies on a Sunday and, oh, isn’t it just lovely that their days cushion Monday, and Donghyuck no longer has a reason to hate it anymore?

 _Forever_ , is the message he left for Johnny and Mark, semi-immortalized through a film that he knows Johnny watches when the lights go out and it’s just him in a cold apartment. The world has given the names Lunario and Golden Lion to fixtures in the sky, only one of which you can observe without a high-powered telescope and a PhD in astrophysics. It suits them.

They die about a year and a few months apart, give or take a few days, and, for a while, Donghyuck stays in bed to stare at the ceiling. There used to be a water stain, until they got their ceiling re-done, and there used to be a spider web in the corner until Jaehyun caught it under a cup and placed it out their window.

(Jaehyun is a lesson in compassion while the world continues to take everything that Donghyuck has ever clung to.)

_Ah, this is sadness._

_Ah, this is loss._

Donghyuck clings to these feelings and doesn’t let go when Johnny looks at him and says, “Have you prepared Jaehyun for the day you die?”

It’s prophetic in the wrong direction.

-

-

-

If one of them was left, Donghyuck wouldn’t have ended up like this.

Donghyuck gives an interview and tells the world that he can still stand strong for them, that there’s nothing to worry about—all the bullshit that Taeil would have said. That Mark said. It sounds robotic and fake coming from him, and yet the world still believes it because they want to. They need to.

There are billions of years between now and the death of the sun. Donghyuck claps his hands together and asks what’s taking so long.

Choking the life out of happiness, Donghyuck stares upon the newcomer with hesitation, wondering if this is the end of his time here, if he can move on, if this can be the last time that he saves a life. Jaehyun is out of town, filming a movie about something with _cars_ and _guns_ and _death_ , and isn’t that ironic as Donghyuck watches an empty car fly through the sky, Jungwoo swerving out of the way before asking Donghyuck why he didn’t warn him.

“Why need a warning for the inevitable?” he mutters, because, right, isn’t that what this is?

Questions aren’t meant to be answered.

There’s something overwhelming of feeling light filter between your fingers and bend in your grip. It’s painful, at first, and Donghyuck isn’t sure how he made his world explode that first time. This sort of shit doesn’t happen enough. The world doesn’t know how to approach and instruct and guide these people towards a future that they can understand.

Crimes are committed and people are saved and the world continues to turn and turn and turn, even if they don’t understand a thing.

Donghyuck grows in a series of explosions, one after another, even when held in the darkness of a house in the outskirts of a dying city. It’s here that he meets Taeil, who holds out his hand and tells him that, sure, he can be whatever _he_ wants to be, and not what the world expects of him. That’s his first lesson, after all, and isn’t that the way we should guide children in the first? Why keep them in the dark.

It takes some time, but Donghyuck eventually learns to feel the light and hold the light, and burns fade to scars, and Donghyuck is no longer _Donghyuck_ , but he is Solaris, a man who fights in the sun, a sidekick to a man who requires the moon to journey to places a human can only dream of. And that’s something worthy of discussion, so let’s talk about this.

Not all superheroes have powers, and not all powers are useful.

Lunario was a man who became a hero because he happened to be in the right place at the wrong time. Under the light of the moon, he can find himself wherever he wishes to be and, in that moment, where he wanted to be happened to be a place where trouble also called itself home.

Donghyuck was a man who was born with a power that could take him places and, for a while, it never did. Taeil dragged him into the sun and said, here, it’s okay to be alive. The world told him to shine and Donghyuck thought, okay, I think I can do that. Asking for a hero, they received one that was better off hiding in the shadows and living the life he wanted, and not the one that everyone expected.

Forcing someone to do something, now, when has that ever ended well?

Rarely, sometimes, maybe if it’s something they _needed_. Donghyuck didn’t _need_ to become a hero. The world wanted him to and, for a boy who lived a life so far away and chained to the earth, well, it’s something of a novelty to be wanted.

The first time Donghyuck kills a man isn’t _actually_ the first time, so he thinks, _yeah, I can do it_.

Maybe that’s where it all started.

Mark races into Donghyuck’s life like a raging wildfire, without consideration for the lasting effects he’ll leave. It’s different from Taeil, who walks, surely but steadily, guiding Donghyuck into the world that neither of them never wanted to be in. Mark is a hero, the kind of hero that the world loves, and it shows in the way that people look at him like he holds the sky on his shoulders.

When he dies, the world does a double-take, and Donghyuck thinks that the world’s expectations aren’t something he really wants to live up to, after all.

Jaehyun asks him to, though, so he does, watching villains burn to ashes before his very eyes. And, right, maybe being a hero was never really his thing, and the world was just trying to save its own ass from _its_ inevitable creation.

When Jaehyun dies, well, then what expectations must Donghyuck live up to other than his own? If he’s to burn to ashes, then at least some of the world that shaped him should, too.

-

-

-

**Jaehyun Jung, actor, injured on set for new movie!**

20XX September 16, XX:XX AM

_OO Studio – UPDATE: Jung’s agency has confirmed that he was injured on set. For the actor’s safety and well-being, no further information is being provided beyond what the studio has already provided._

“Why did you do that?” Donghyuck asks.

(No matter how hard Jaehyun’s manager tries, they always find him. Outside the hospital, reporters and paparazzi loiter, waiting for a glimpse of the actor who cradles a broken arm close to his chest.

Donghyuck can’t tell if he’s angry at the circumstances or at Jaehyun.)

“Why shouldn’t I?”

 _Because you’re not a hero_ , Donghyuck wants to say. _It isn’t your job_.

“You scared me,” is Donghyuck’s reply. It’s honest, and that should be enough. “Don’t do that again.”

Jaehyun is smiling when he says, “I’ve never been good at listening to you.”

He fell in love with a reckless fool who loves the world more than himself. In another life, Donghyuck gets that.

-

-

-

_There’s a cross above his head. When will it go away?_

-

-

-

_Let’s talk sadness_.

What do you look like when you’re sad? Can anyone tell?

Grief is just sadness, bulked up, and Donghyuck has never really cultivated a good grasp of it. Young, it had been swallowed up by anger and morphed itself into something truly ugly. Donghyuck is twenty-eight when he stares at himself in the mirror and cries, just to know what the world sees. It’s kind of ugly, and the image makes him sick.

(So he vomits into the toilet and flushes away letters and numbers and movie titles.)

He pinches his cheeks and wishes upon a star or two or maybe ten and pushes his lips into a smile that’s always looked pretty fake and pretty bad and pretty pretty. Citizens hold him on a pedestal and sing songs with his name— _Solaris, Solaris, Solaris_ —and Donghyuck, when Jaehyun is dead and gone, half of his ashes thrown into an orchard that grows plumbs, laughs so hard he thinks he might die. And maybe that’s what the world deserves.

Jaehyun likes to mouth secrets against Donghyuck’s cheek while he’s asleep. Things from _I love you_ to _I want to spend forever with you_. They’re selfish little things that Donghyuck wishes he could make come true.

Visions of a small house in the countryside beside a pasture visit Donghyuck in his sleep, and whenever Jaehyun asks him what he dreams about, he lies.

“The perfect fight.”

Sort of.

Just living is a fight, isn’t it?

_Let’s talk happiness_.

These things are relative, aren’t they? What happiness is, what sadness is; aren’t they simply two sides of the same coin? They’re blended together with anger, a smooth transition. Donghyuck walks the line.

Silence.

Donghyuck _is_ the line.

But, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Jaehyun?

Let’s talk about Jaehyun.

-

-

-

“I’ve fallen in love,” Donghyuck tells Taeil. The older hero stares at him, stewing in silence. This small, suburban home is comfortable and a place that Donghyuck has learned he can run to. Today is no exception. “Surprising, huh?”

Taeil’s child is small in his arms and, “No, not really. Falling in love is just… a thing. If you fall in love or not, does it really matter?”

Love is revolutionary.

(To Donghyuck, at least. Love is something that’s never been in Donghyuck’s gaze or periphery and oh, well, at first he thought he needed to see a _doctor_ and Mark and Taeil had laughed like they knew something secret and oh, oh, they definitely did. Their eyes were glinting and their smiles were somewhat infectious and, he sees now.

Love is a second home.)

“Isn’t this the dream? To fall in love? To get married and have kids and be happy?”

Taeil turns his head, tilts it to the side, and says, “The dream is whatever you want it to be, really. If that’s your dream, then that’s fine. If it isn’t, then that’s fine, too. We’ve always lived for ourselves.”

And, right. That’s true.

Living for someone else has never been a _thing_. In the end of everything, Donghyuck lives for himself. Every moment is a struggle for some sort of self-redemption that he’ll never be able to grasp.

Donghyuck falls in love with Jaehyun because he tastes like freedom. Every single little thing that’s built up in his chest—a bundle of knots—comes undone when Jaehyun holds him close and says, very evenly, “I’d like to see you again, if you’d let me.” Donghyuck lets him, and they meet again, and again, and again.

On their third date, Jaehyun recites a poem and Donghyuck listens, raptured as if this is the first time he’s ever heard a man speak. There’s nothing pretty about any of the words, and Donghyuck realizes later, in the silence of the night, that it was a poem about death and grief and all the terrible things that come along with it, strung together in such a pretty way that Donghyuck thinks he’d like to experience it.

Jaehyun asks Donghyuck if he believes in fortune telling and Donghyuck says, quiet, “No. No, no. I don’t think I do.”

(There’s a cross above Jaehyun’s head and, oh, maybe, in the end, Donghyuck sees some truth to it all.)

The beach becomes their place and then, eventually, just Donghyuck’s. Cracks are built into the walls of the lighthouse now, and, well, it’s fitting that everything is falling apart, and this building is, too. One day, they knock it down, and Donghyuck walks across nature’s bridge to an island of sand.

Jaehyun dies on a Tuesday and Donghyuck thinks that love is one of those things that has to end eventually, right?

-

-

-

“They don’t see him around much anymore, do they?”

“I wonder what happened to Solaris?”

“He never was the same after Golden Lion passed, don’t you think?”

“I wonder who it was this time…”

“All superheroes are accounted for, aren’t they?”

This is how the nation re-learns that not every single hero wears a cape.

-

-

-

Learn, unlearn, repeat.

Learn, unlearn, repeat.

Heroes don’t need to have superpowers. They don’t have to fling their bodies from building to building with reckless abandon. Staring a villain down the face doesn’t make a hero. Saving someone does. There are plenty of ways to save others, after all. Donghyuck saw this in the way Taeil looked at his child, in the way Johnny would hold Mark’s hand. Jaehyun would hold his face, gently, and remind Donghyuck that all of this would one day will be far, far behind them.

 _Them_.

Everyone is hungry for the future, but it’s not up to _them_ whether they make it or not.

Discuss.

Well, okay.

Think of it this way: the manifestation of dreams has never been in your hands; it’s been tied up in the strings of the universe. Stars in the distance are already burnt out, and there’s an inevitability tangled with numbers that drags you down a path. Essentially: The world doesn’t make any sense. And for the most part, for most people, that’s fine. They find something to ground them and never let go.

Donghyuck doesn’t have a choice. It’s ripped from his hands right in front of him, eyes lifeless and blood everywhere and, right, _right_. This isn’t that kind of story, but let’s all remember Jaehyun for the man he was and not the man he could’ve been.

(He’ll always wonder about the life they could’ve had. They say there’s no point in letting it all fester and Donghyuck thinks, well, then _fuck you_.)

To give ones life for another is the way of a hero and Jaehyun was always more of a hero than Donghyuck ever was.

We’re getting close to the present now, so let’s recap.

Taeil is dead.

Mark is dead.

And, now, Jaehyun is dead.

Johnny is a widow, Taeil’s wife and child are without husband and father, respectively, and Donghyuck has lost _everything_.

Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s continue.

Donghyuck and Jaehyun were private, so it’s months before anyone realizes why Donghyuck—why _Solaris_ —is simply _gone_.

And, here we stand.

The memory replays in his mind if there’s a moment of silence, and yet that’s all Donghyuck finds himself in. His life vacillates between silence and chaos, and Donghyuck struggles to find reprieve between either of them. At home, in their apartment, Donghyuck is reminded of Jaehyun, so he packs things up in cardboard boxes, brings them to the middle of a desert, and burns them under the midday sun. No one is there to comfort him as he watches everything that keeps him grounded float into the sky.

Someone—a fan—puts two and two together, eventually, and there’s a flurry of media as the world searches for a hero that mourns, feet buried so deep in the sand that it no longer burns.

Maybe it’s in this nowhere land that things start to twist themselves into unsalvageable knots. The start is slow, and Donghyuck takes the time to think and think and think until it’s _too much thinking_ , and well, that’s how he’s gotten himself in this mess in the first place, thinking and caring about what the world wants from him.

In a desert, he comes to the conclusion that he’s done.

Jaehyun wouldn’t be happy with him, but, ah, well.

Jaehyun isn’t here anymore to tell him that.

-

-

-

“You know,” Jaehyun says, hands pressed against Donghyuck’s face, fingers gentle against his temple, “you’re pretty when you fight.”

“I don’t think that’s the way you should describe it, you know.”

(Donghyuck kills people for a living. It’s his sole job, his sole purpose. The balance between a regular life and that of a hero isn’t something that he’s ever been able to navigate. Not the same way that Taeil and Mark could.

He’s happy, though, so does it really matter?)

“I said _you_ look pretty. Not that it’s pretty.” Jaehyun is thoughtful. “It’s never pretty when someone dies.”

That’s true. It’s never pretty when someone dies.

Mark’s face in his final moments, Taeil begging for Donghyuck to protect his child—those scenes sometimes replay in his mind, over and over and over again because that’s their fate. They’ll die the way that they’re meant to: Like heroes. Whatever that means.

Life will continue to take and take and take from Donghyuck until he’s nothing left and he, too, is dead and gone.

The universe laughs and kicks around the tea leaves and _oh_. Donghyuck was so, so wrong.

-

-

-

_Well. Now I’m alone_.

-

-

-

_Take some time. All the time you need._

_Just not too much._

-

-

-

**[ REPORTER 1: BREAKING NEWS. IN A SHOCKING TURN OF EVENTS, SOLARIS HAS APPEARED ON SITE AND HAS BEGUN ATTACKING CIVLIANS -- ]**

**[ REPORTER 2: HOLD ON A SECOND. WE HAVE BREAKING NEWS FROM DOWNTOWN, WHERE HERO SOLARIS HAS REPORTEDLY BEGUN ATTACKING INNOCENT BYSTANDERS -- ]**

**[ REPORTER 3: IT’S LIKE A SCENE FROM A HORROR MOVIE AS SOLARIS SETS FIRE TO BUILDINGS, PEOPLE -- ]**

Jaehyun is dead and so is anything Donghyuck has to live for. His descent isn’t that fast, though. His fingers dig into the dirt of the mountain his body rolls down.

At the bottom, with grime and blood caked under his nails, Donghyuck stands and decides that the top of the mountain isn’t what he wants, anyways.

“Don’t you think you were made to save the world?”

_No._

_No, I don’t think I was_.

-

-

-

First and foremost, there is something cathartic about letting your rage take hold. It’s a dangerous sort of impulse that should _never_ be practiced, and yet Donghyuck collects the rays of the sun in his palm and watches the faces of passerby contort into fear as he leaves the name Solaris behind him and decides that this is no longer his fight.

People strive to categorize things in an attempt to instill order in the world. There’s a fine line, though, and Donghyuck has been patient and kind in adhering to the expectations and path set forth for him. It was inevitable, though, wasn’t, it, Donghyuck falling to the side?

He presses his finger to the center of his palm and counts to twenty-five before letting another blast go. It is pretty, he guesses, watching the light condense at the tips of his fingers and travel at the speed that physics dictates it to. Time is something that’s become twisted and indecipherable through the years, and Donghyuck isn’t sure how long it’s been since Jaehyun has died.

(Years, it’s been _years_ , and he doesn’t hear Johnny call out his name anymore when he walks by; he can’t look Taeil’s child in the eyes anymore because, no, that’s not his goal anymore. It’s just a task that was handed to him without consideration of repercussions. Just like this.

Just like being a hero was.)

Donghyuck kills civilians without discretion. There’s something terrible about it but, above it all, there’s something tragic. He doesn’t enjoy this or want this. Donghyuck doesn’t want _anything_. That’s why he does this. Buildings and bodies burn, and for the first time in a _very_ long time, Donghyuck feels at peace.

They interview Johnny, asking him whether anyone saw this coming.

Looking into the camera, Johnny says, “ _No, I don’t think they did. There are very few things that the world understands, though_.”

Donghyuck hears what he’s trying to say.

 _Death is an inevitability_.

“Sure it is,” Donghyuck mutters, pushing himself back from his desk. The people know where he hides. Everyone, more than anything, is afraid to come too close. There’s always the chance of being burned. “It doesn’t mean I can’t fight against it, though.”

He’s labeled a hero turned villain, and, sure, that’s _accurate_ , but the line between the two is so thin, that Donghyuck realizes that every single one of them is a danger to society. Letting any of them live would be a shame.

So Donghyuck compiles a list. It’s extensive, hundreds of names that pull him across the country. Everything starts delicate enough—small-name heroes the world doesn’t recognize going missing in the middle of the day, bodies appearing at the edges of the city, unseeing eyes staring at the sun. Donghyuck digs his fingers into the dirt and makes a grave for his old superhero costume, a place for it to rest along with his name.

He’s no longer Solaris, and yet people still envision him as the sun. The Sun Killer, they call him; a murderer in broad daylight. There’s something to be said for the things they allow heroes to do—the limit for what they’re allowed to commit is awfully high. Time passes and passes and passes, and only comes to a stop when Donghyuck stomps the light out of Azure’s eyes and a city descends into chaos.

It a chase across countries and oceans and yet—and yet…

People who are broken look at him and say, “I understand.”

For the first time in his life, Donghyuck feels seen. If he’s the man that will kill the sun, so be it.

Somewhere along the way, a cross begins to materialize over Donghyuck’s head.

-

-

-

Donghyuck is ten when he sets his house on fire and sits on the side of the road and, think carefully, isn’t this the first sign? Shouldn’t the world have locked him away and, well, someone _tried_ , and others brought him to the light, and this is where the world created him and pulled him into hell.

This is how Donghyuck dies, too. There’s no redemption for him. A flurry, a mess, an indecipherable tangle of things that has no name other than _sad_.

With his last breath, Jaehyun stands in front of him and says, “You were pretty like this, too. Even if what you did wasn’t.”

Donghyuck dies and thinks, _Am I pretty like this, too?_

**Author's Note:**

> it is true that the world is awfully complicated.


End file.
